(a) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for providing an alternative telephony service by automatically switching an originating call between a basic telephony network and an alternative telephony network, and a method of computing an inverse call charge which can be reduced or should be additionally paid according to whether telephony communication is performed using a basic telephony or an alternative telephony.
(b) Description of the Related Art
Conventional telephony communication technologies are classified into a basic telephony for providing a telephony communication service using a telephone office, a telephone switching device, a telephone, and a telephone line connecting the telephone office, the telephone switching device, and the telephone, and an alternative telephony for providing a communication service using wired and wireless Internet connection. Various telephony communication relay technologies are being developed to use all of the basic telephony and the alternative telephony.
Such a conventional telephony communication relay technology has a disadvantage in that it is inefficient in switching a telephony communication mode since a system such as a keyphone and the like selects internal telephony communication or external telephony communication, or a PSTN-USB gateway selects an alternative telephony or a basic telephony when a PSTN network telephone is used by inputting particular identification symbols (a particular number, an asterisk (*), a sharp (#)).
Further, while a caller actively uses an alternative telephony service in order to receive a direct call charge reduction benefit since a conventional alternative telephony provides a free call and call charge reduction benefits to only the caller, a receiver is less inclined to use or utilize the alternative telephony service.
Since only the caller receives the benefit of a charge reduction, this causes the alternative telephony service not to be efficiently nor equally utilized between the caller and the receiver.
In order to solve the above problems, Korea Patent Registration Publication No. 10-0862750 discloses a telephone connection relay apparatus for performing a telephone connection between a caller and a receiver by selecting an alternative telephone and a telephone using a public telephone network/mobile communication network according to an attribute of a phone number.
Also, Korea Patent Registration Publication No. 10-0914164 discloses a telephone relay apparatus for saving a call charge, which determines whether a receiver side subscribes to an alternative telephony service (for example, SKYPE service) through an Internet network and provides free call and messaging functions using the Internet network according to a result of the determination.
However, the relay apparatuses fixedly select a telephony communication mode according to the attribute of the phone number and according to whether the receiver side subscribes to the Internet telephony communication service, so that it is still difficult to expect to automatically connect a call through any one communication line providing a cheap call rate.
The above information disclosed in this Background section is only for enhancement of understanding of the background of the invention and therefore it may contain information that does not form the prior art that is already known in this country to a person of ordinary skill in the art.